Hands on Tauranga offers students stimulating and original learning opportunities with real museum objects that support the New Zealand curriculum at primary and secondary school level.
Four pieces of flint.
Flint, or flintstone, is a type of sedimentary rock, made of silica.
Flintstones often have a rough lumpy surface but when they are broken they look like dark glass. It has been one of the most useful types of stone to humankind. When flintstones are broken, they have a sharp edge which could be used as a knife, or a scraper.- When flint and an iron-containing material such as pyrite or steel are hit together, they can make a spark. For many centuries, flint was one of the main ways for people in many countries to make fire. People would carry a little box called a "tinder box" which had some tinder along with flint and pyrite or steel. The tinder was used to catch the spark and start a fire. Tinder could be sawdust, cloth, grass or bark. Flints were later used to make a spark to fire a gun.
date: Flint was formed 60-95 millions years ago. The use of flint to make stone tools dates back hundreds of thousands of years.
maximum dimension: 30mm
subject area: Social Science, Science, Maths
subject themes: Fossils, Geology, Minerals, Stone Age
handling collection number: HC247/1-4
